Description
Product Description
2019 Moonbeam Silver Medal
Many thousands of years ago, when a sheet of ice up to a mile thick began to let go of the land, the Atlantic Ocean flooded great valleys that had been scooped out by glaciers, and the salty waves of an inland sea lapped the green hills of Vermont. Into this arm of the sea swam Charlotte. Her milky, smooth, muscled body sliced slowly through the water like scissors through silk. Like a chirping canary, her voice echoed across dark waters showing the way to her pod as belugas have done for millions of years.
In 1849, a crew building a railroad through Charlotte, Vermont, dug up strange and beautiful bones in a farmer’s field. A local naturalist asked Louis Agassiz to help identify them, and the famous scientist concluded that the bones belonged to a beluga whale. But how could a whale’s skeleton have been buried so far from the ocean? The answer―that Lake Champlain had once been an arm of the sea―encouraged radical new thinking about geological time scales and animal evolution.
Charlotte’s Bones is a haunting, science-based reconstruction of how Charlotte died 11,000 years ago in a tidal marsh, how the marsh became a field, how Charlotte found a second life as the Vermont state fossil, and what messages her bones whisper to us now about the fragility of life and our changing Earth. Color throughout
Review
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Brilliant.
Erin Rounds’ writing feels like magic. Use this book as a mentor text to teach showing not telling, imagery, and sentence fluency. It’s also a lovely example of how to make science come to life through a narrative story. "
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Melissa Taylor, Imagination Soup
"Extensive back matter provides details about the scientific impact of the discovery, beluga whales and other Ice Age mammals of the Champlain Valley, a glossary, and further resources. A well-researched historical narrative."
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Caroline Davis, Benicia PL, ACLNC BayViews
" A substantial introduction to a significant North American fossil."
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Kirkus
"
5 Stars Author Erin Rounds has written a lovely, lyrical story of Charlotte’s journey and discovery accompanied by beautiful illustrations in serene colors. In addition, there are six pages of in-depth back matter to give youngsters much more background and information about this extraordinary find. The back matter includes information on other Ice Age creatures that lived in the area, a good glossary, and a list of other resources for further study. This is a winner. "
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Rosi Hollinbeck, Manhattan Book Review
Book Description
A 2019 Moonbeam Children's Book Award Winner, Silver in the Non-Fiction — Picture Book Category
From the Publisher
Some reader reviews:
I am a paleoanthropologist at Dartmouth College-- I study the human evolution and both retrieve & study early human fossils in Africa. We've connected very briefly on twitter when I tweeted out my love of Jeff Howe's book about Charlotte and Nick Pyerson's recent whale book. I just purchased and read Charlotte's Bones to my kids this morning. It is beyond beautiful. I tell my college students all the time that every fossil is precious; that every fossil has a story to tell and deserves to have its story told. Your book captures not just the science, but the true meaning of fossils and how they reveal a deep connectedness between living things, past and present. It is a gift of a book-- thank you. Jerry DeSilva
I read Charlotte’s Bones yesterday. My sister Ellen showed it to me. It is beautifully written and illustrated to such an extent it is difficult to read without becoming very emotional. The combination of such pure prose and captivating illustration makes the reader ‘own’ Charlotte’s experience and therefore the reader cares. This is key to us humans, particularly the young ones, actually investing emotionally and practically in the fate of our precious wildlife. I think this fabulous book should be compulsory reading for children and if it makes them sad so much the better. It